Fossil Wiki:Naming conventions
Naming conventions on the Fossil Wiki are pretty straight forward and depend a lot on simply common sense. Note that this page will be continuously updated as new types of articles find their way onto the wiki. People If a persons full name is known, such as Paul Callistus Sereno, then the article is to be created at that title with more common uses of the name, such as Paul Sereno, being redirected to the full name. This also applies for articles which were originally created not knowing the full name, but when the full name is eventually learned — in these cases, the original article will be moved to the full name, thus redirecting the original automatically in the process. Scientific names All article titles that are in regard to genus or species specific genera should be italicized by using the template. This template italicizes the pages title. Within the article as well, all scientific names are to be italicized, such as Tianyulong, Tylosaurus, and Hesperornis. Species When a species is mentioned (on its own page or another), the scientific binomial name should at least be mentioned once. After this, the genus name or common name can be used. *common names: lowercase e.g. tyrannosaur or tyrannosaurus (but tyrannosaur is much better) *scientific names: :*Genus: Uppercase, italicized :*species: lowercase, italicized So: *scientific: :*binomial names: Deinonychus antirrhopus; Microraptor gui :*genus names: Deinonychus; Microraptor *common: :*genus names: deinonychus, microraptor Do not use common names too much, they look amateuristic. If you use them, realize that you are referring to the genus, or to an order ending on -ia. For example ankylosaur can be used for Ankylosaurus or for Ankylosauria. Even more informally it can refer to the family, as equivalent to ankylosaurid. Inconsequential use confuses the reader. Plurals: Best use common names, as they may be pluralised in English : e.g. 45 tyrannosaurs, but never 45 tyrannosauruses. Don't pluralize scientific (Latin) names in an English way: Velociraptors is wrong. ''Velociraptors is correct, but now you are meaning several species belonging to the genus ''Velociraptor, some of which you don't recognize. It may sound strange, but "Sarah is attacked by lots of Velociraptor and 3 Utahraptor" is the correct way. The same applies to pluralizing binomial names: "John was stampeded by a large herd of Yunnanosaurus huangi and 5 Yunnanosaurus robustus". There is no change. Don't use binomials in this case unless you want to confer that the identification of the species is very important. Note: the correct plural of Velociraptor would be Velociraptores, that of Tarbosaurus would be Tarbosauri. Luckily, nobody uses these. Higher order taxa The formal names of all groupings higher than genus are capitalized, never italicized. If fitting the situation, common names are preferrable. These are in lowercase. Example: "Lambeosaurus is a genus of hadrosaurid dinosaur" sounds a lot better than "Lambeosaurus is a dinosaur genus belonging to the Hadrosauridae". The same applies to other higher-order taxa. Note that a hadrosaur belongs to the genus Hadrosaurus, while a hadrosaurid belongs to the family Hadrosauridae. More to come Category:Fossil Wiki policies and guidelines